Leclair and Gaddis and McElroy

[Bill Konrad]

>All this discussion of William Gaddis prompts me to ask the group a question
>I've had on my mind for a couple-three years.  In a bookstore hunting for
>Pychoniana, I was prompted to buy a book of lit-crit by Tom Leclair (the name
>of which suddenly -- embarrassingly -- escapes me) about a group of BIG post
>WWII novels that he considers masterpieces because of the was they master and
>overwhelm the reader.

I'll throw in my 1/2 cent's worth, though I'm not entirely unbiased since I
had a few courses with Tom as an undergrad.  The book's title is "The Art
of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction" published by the U of
Illinois Press.

The book uses "systems" theory in much of its analysis
>and contains chapters on GR, SOMETHING HAPPENED (Heller), JR (Gaddis), WOMEN
>AND MEN (Joseph McElroy), THE PUBLIC BURNING (R Coover), LETTERS (Barth) and
>ALWAYS COMING HOME (U LeGuin).  "Pynchon Notes" has been promising a review
>of the LeClair book for a couple issues now, but no go.
>
>Anyway, I'd love to hear reactions to the LeClair book.

I bought the book primarily because I had some classes with Tom, in
particular an honors seminar about science in fiction (not science fiction)
in which I read GR for the first time. Let's just say it changed the way I
read fiction (till then I naively thought about fiction as only being about
telling a story). He was in the final stages of writing the book during the
seminar and I bought the book when I went off to grad school. I found the
book to have an interesting mix of tough-going theory, leavened with wit
and occasional earnest missives about ecology and culture and the role of
systems in them. But then I've only attempted to read the GR and Leguin
sections since those were the only authors I had read (actually, we read
LeGuin in the seminar also, along with Tom Robbin's "Even Cowgirls get the
Blues" and Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude"--two books I'd add to
anyone's "must read" list)

>
>Second, when I read that book, I was familiar with Coover and LeGuin and
>Heller and Barth but not with Gaddis and McElroy.  What do people think of
>McElroy?  I bought THE LETTER LEFT TO ME and WOMEN AND MEN, but (I'm
>embarassed to say) I just can't pick them up.

I read "The Letter Left to Me" but it left me cold. I found it very dry
with very little to grab onto, but at the same time, since I had heard
McElroy give a reading once, I could hear his voice as I read (he has a
wonderfully warm and urbane voice) and I kept on reading the book. I had an
odd feeling that there was something profound occuring in the book, but
that I just wasn't quite able to connect to on a conscious level. I haven't
gone back to it since, so I really can't offer much in the way of
encouragement.

Best,


Bill Konrad
konrad at sage.cc.purdue.edu

         Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

                                        -Schweitzer